Jenny Hoff

What's your name?
Jenny Hoff

What's your position?
Political Reporter/Weekend Morning Anchor

When did you start at KXAN?
March of 2005

What was your most memorable story?
Definitely covering Hurricane Rita. KXAN photographer Julie Karam and I had both never been in a hurricane. However, we got in our SUV and drove to Galveston as cars were packing the highways coming the other way! Let's just say it was a very clear road for us. Then, as the hurricane was moving, we followed it going to Port Arthur and Beaumont. In Port Arthur, we went with police as they tried to get the last people out of the town. The police chief broke down crying because he felt like he was abandoning his people. Then we went to Beaumont and stayed the night in our truck outside, under the roof of a parking garage! As the eye of the hurricane passed over us, we saw flying debris, and the garage we were staying in starting flooding. The next day, we drove around what felt like a ghost town and watched police with guns drawn looking for looters. It was an incredibly exciting and emotional experience.

How did you get started in TV?
All my life, I was interested in current national and international events and performance art. The university in my state happened to be the number one journalism school in the country. So, when they offered me a scholarship, I knew it was fate that I go into broadcast journalism and combine my passions. I'm naturally an extremely curious person with a good dose of skepticism. If that wasn't enough, when I spent hours in the editing bays at my university working on perfecting a story, I knew I had found my calling.  While in college, I worked at the NBC affiliate as a reporter in Columbia, Missouri. I had a full load of classes with two majors, but that certainly didn't stop them from calling me at 3 a.m. to go cover fires and accidents. After college, I went to work as a reporter for WTVC in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Where did you go to college?
I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Missouri-Columbia and received two degrees: Journalism and Political Science. I also spent a year studying abroad in Singapore, where I studied with former TIME magazine journalists and tracked terrorist group movements in Southeast Asia as part of an investigative piece. I also received an International Radio and Television Society Fellowship and worked in the breaking news department of World News Tonight.

What's your hometown?
St. Louis, Missouri---and Italy. I spent many of my summers there growing up, as it is my mom's native country.

How do you want to make a difference?
There are many ways I'd love to make a difference. I have a very weak spot for animals. I've volunteered in Austin at the Wildlife Rehab Center and fed five baby raccoons with bottles at one time, fed 50 baby birds with a syringe and nursed a deer back to health. I would love to start a foundation one day that encourages people to respect and love wildlife and domesticated animals. It's very much a part of who I am, and I have faith that we have the ability to change the status quo and treat all life with respect.

Tell us about your family.
My mom is from Italy and runs a travel company specializing in Italian travel. My big brother works in New York as a computer software engineer, and my dad is a lawyer in St. Louis. I am extremely close to my family and probably speak as much as three hours on the phone to them a day!

What's your guilty pleasure?
I don't know if this is guilty as much as a passion. I absolutely love dancing: country- western, salsa, Middle-Eastern, you name it. It doesn't matter if I know what I'm doing, I love learning new steps!

You can e-mail Jenny at Jenny.Hoff@kxan.com .